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This year he was appointed to chair the sub-committee scrutinising EU draft legislation, a post always held by a serving law lord.

During a Lords debate on Monday night he raised a number of concerns about a "framework decision" on a Europe-wide arrest warrant, which the Government is expected to approve in two weeks' time at a meeting of justice and home affairs ministers in Brussels.

Once the draft has been signed, Parliament will have to pass legislation putting it into effect by the end of next year.

The warrant will replace extradition between EU states. It covers all offences for which a person can jailed for a year in the country requesting arrest.

The plans are being rushed through, alongside a separate anti-terrorism measure, in response to the events of September 11. However, Lord Scott said that the arrest warrant proposal was "only marginally concerned with terrorism" and did not require such a strict timetable.

It was "much more worrying" than the revised anti-terrorism measures, he said. It would be "highly regrettable" if legislation on the arrest warrant was brought into effect without sufficient consideration.

"I urge the Government to take great care that . . . the bandwagon that is carrying along the bulk of the counter-terrorist measures does not . . . carry with it this measure before it is ready."

Lord Scott was concerned that people could be arrested and sent abroad simply to be interrogated by an examining magistrate. It would no longer be necessary for the requesting country to show that there was sufficient evidence for the suspect to answer.

The plans also made "substantial inroads" into two further safeguards in existing extradition laws. The first was the so-called double criminality rule, which prevents people from being extradited on charges that are not offences in Britain.

However, the framework document lists 25 broad offences to which this safeguard would not apply. They include fraud, corruption, racism and xenophobia and swindling, which are not offences as such in Britain.

The other safeguard was that nobody could be extradited at present without the Home Secretary's consent. According to the framework document, that decision would be left instead to the "executing judicial authority", who it is intended should be a district judge.

Lord Rooker, the Home Office minister, admitted that he did not have immediate answers to the "many legitimate questions" peers had raised. He said the principle of the arrest warrant was to eliminate barriers to swift extradition.

His ministerial colleague, Bob Ainsworth, admitted that the framework document had not been available in English until early this month.

He said the proposal was part of a long-term EU commitment "to enhance judicial co-operation in criminal matters".

The Government was satisfied that decisions made under the framework document and legislation to implement it would comply with the human rights convention.